Torrentspy is monitored by Copyright Thoughtpolice

My coworker just got a nasty letter from his ISP (optonline) accusing him of copyright infringement. It turns out that his kid got caught downloading some warez from one of the trackers indexed by Torrentspy.

Conclusions are simple: someone is monitoring Torrentspy network. I don’t know if they do this by setting up decoys, or if they actually connect to legitimate torrents and log the IP’s in the swarm. But either way, they are out there and if you are not careful you might get caught.

The ISP my coworker is using seems to be doing the right thing. They notified him about the complaint, and warned him that future complaints may lead to termination of his account. It doesn’t seem that they were willing to cough up his personal data so far, so he might get lucky and avoid being slapped with one of those frivolous lawsuits.

The poor kid is not allowed to use BitTottent anymore. He got a stern talking to from his pop for using these new-fangled, easily trackable p2p technologies instead of leaching from Usenet the way internet Gods intended it. :P

Sigh… I really liked TorrentSpy – it had lots of content, and large community behind it. But I guess it’s time to move on…

Update 12/30/2006 05:25:04 PM

As many people mentioned in the comments, my assumption that Torrentspy itself is being monitored might not be correct. It’s possible that one or more trackers indexed by Torrentspy are monitored, but not necessarily the whole site.

Wow, the same thing happened to me, and I have the same ISP, and I downloaded from the same site, and I’m also a kid. It scared me so much I haven’t downloaded anything on Bittorrent, P2P, or anything similar since. Wow, this is freaky… I sure did learn my lesson…

Wow, the same exact thing happened to me. I’m a kid, I have the same ISP, downloaded from the same site, and I learnt my lesson. Never touched Bittorrent or anything similar since…It scared the **** out of me. Luckily, nothing else ever happened

Inaccurate, Torrentspy is a website it only hosts the .torrent files, there is no Torrentspy network. Same thing for every other popular torrent indexing site. Your ISP gets the DMCA letter when one of their IPs is found in a torrent they are monitoring and has nothing to do with where you got the torrent file. The indexing site has nothing to do with this, you are wrong!

What was he actually cited for downloading? They should tell him the exact name of the torrent. If it was a movie or song than it may not have been torrentspy that got him in trouble but the torrent in general.

That what the Azureus SafePeer plugin is for.
It blocks spying IP ranges from accessing your torrents, meaning you can still download using the (much more user friendly than usenet) bittorrent protocol

Will anyone ever get a clue about this? It’s not torrentspy or piratebay they are monitoring and even if they are so what. Use peerguardian and ignore all the anti-p2p/govt/spyware/fakes/trojan/virus folks. This is a real community effort. Nuf said.

I would tell them to bite my shinny metal ass.
If he was downloading “wares”. There’s not much that the maker of
such wares can do but complain.
honestly if your isp would cut your connection for downloads its time to find a
new ISP.

Well i had a letter from my isp of copyright infrigement a month ago, which was a complaint from microsoft of accusing me of downloading their copyrights. It was a file from demonoid so i encurage you people not to download torrents since this stuff is pretty deep all im saying if you want something so bad just buy it there is a chance that you will get caught. I got caught but I believe it was a warning message. If you get a letter best chances of getting out of trouble delete all the illegal stuff you have downloaded, this way the court will see that you are sorry. I have my mother doing some searches on google about RIAAs and lawsuits. people have gotten letter from isp of accusations but so far in her searches they are not sueing people they are mostly sueing companys.

Wow. My paranoia was absolutely justified. I wonder what happens if someone “catches” me while I’m using torrentspy for finding/getting _legal_ content. Will I need a “human – legalspeak”-translator? E. g.:
alias “Creative Commons”=”musician doesn’t have kids that would starve if I don’t buy CDs”
or
“Free and Open Source Software”=”everybody’s allowed to steal it”
Let teeh fun begin!

The same thing happened to me. I called my ISP and blamed it on guests that had been using my computer. They said that it was just an email they received, and for legal purposes they had forwarded the email to me, they did not release any information. They said that basically, the persons who stole the movie didn’t like me giving it away for such a long period of time, and next time don’t leave my torrent open for that long. My ISP is the second largest in my country *I live in Canada* So they would care if it was that big of a deal. I received that and one other notice for a different movie about 3 years ago and I have not heard or received anything since. I have not slowed on my downloading and most of my downloading is done from Torrentspy. Just thought I would throw my experience out there. I don’t know if it has to do with where I live, but it doesn’t appear to be a big deal.

I am not at all surprised that fewer people know about usenet.
If it wasn’t for the binary groups I doubt most providers would
bother to carry it. Ten years ago it was the place to go for
discussion, but now it has become a wasteland of spam and
forgery. I got tired of having to translate full headers just to
make sure the person I am replying to really is that person.

This article is technically misleading. As you said: his kid got caught downloading some warez from one of the trackers indexed by Torrentspy.

The torrent to the purportedly illegal content could easily have been indexed somewhere else too. And of course TorrentSpy doesn’t host any of the content anyway. Finally Torrentspy also tracks torrents for many legal things. As an example: http://www.torrentspy.com/search?query=ubuntu

Now, if your friends kid was download illegal content via bittorrent, that’s definitely wrong, and the warning is appropriate — but if the ISP is tracking http headers and busting him for going to torrentspy, that’s completely inappropriate

“The poor kid is not allowed to use BitTottent anymore. He got a stern talking to from his pop for using these new-fangled, easily trackable p2p technologies instead of leaching from Usenet the way internet Gods intended it.” Bahaha! Right on!
But I’m glad ‘optonline’ did the right thing and sent him a letter about it before just giving away his personal details.

You damm people dont get it .
It dont matter how you hide your #ip it comes back to your server. And they still know who you are..

GROW UP FOLKS . Get a job buy something . look at the christmas presents yall bought now go to wolly world buy a movie not a music cd. they cost too damm much . sit down watch it and stop worrying about the damm torrents . and the fbi the cops. OMG .THE COPS ARE HERE LOOKING AT US DONT POST NO MORE LMAO

Wait… What? My IP comes back to my server? What server? Who are they? How do they know who I am? Music cd’s cost more than movies? Dude, I’m really trying here but I can’t figure out what are you talking about.

First, the kid I was talking about got busted for warez, not music or movies.

Second, the only people who can connect my dynamic IP to my name and address are working at my ISP. The copyright holders must subopena the ISP for that info, and not all ISP’s are willing to give it out without a court order.

Yeah, you can always get caught even if you use peer guardian (I’m guessing this was your point, but I’m still not sure) but then again, anything that lowers the chances of being fucked is a good thing no?

Btw, if you use tor then I don’t think anyone could trace it back in any meaningful and convenient way (though your connection speed would suffer).

Oh, and you should really not use IE when you post “You damn people don’t get it” comments cause it does not lend you any credibility. Just a tip. ;)

Bittorent clients list the downloaders by their ip.
It is amazing that the downloaders / uploaders have never been gone after before by the RAAA with their itimidation tactics.
Just that it was millions of people to go after at one time.
Still if it is intimidation tactics you only have to go after seveal.
Goes to show you how the music industry after abusing both artists and the general public is out of touch with reality sequestering in luxury that it took them this long to even think if this tactic.
Guess they finally had it pointed out to them that there was difffirent p2p file sharing available than Kaaza.
It is always funny to watch the plants on various news shows of the banks and banks of computers with
the experts” manning them.
Nothing but movie sets in essence.

This is how it works. When you connect to your isp your mac address is logged. A mac address or Media access controll address is a physical address hardcoded into your network card. the mac address is the is included in all framed packets. all isp frame packets with your mac address. monitoring a torrent is not that hard you just download with out sharing. then you use what is already built into tcp/ip once you have the ip address of people you download from call arp. Address resolution proticol which just basically asks your computer for its mac address or any near by routers IE at your isp that respond to all requests and boom you now have a mac address and an ip. so you subpoena the isp for the owner of the mac address because it is leased to their ip address. There is no hiding. There is no safe ranges of ip you can ask the tracker who is downloading what or you can just subpoena the tracker to give all connected ip addresses tied with usernames and look at all files uploaded by the users. Bit torrent is not safe there is no safe untrackable way to torrent the basis of the internet is you request a packet and one is sent back but in order to have a packet sent back you must have a return address our source in the packet you sent simple logic would tell you that you cant hid behind the traffic on torrent trackers forever eventually they will make it though the list of users and you will get a CND or a lawsuit. so fight them legally by donating to orgs that are formed to do so.

all the complainant tells your ISP is IP# such-and-such downloaded such-and-such file on this date and time from your system. the ISP knows which customer had whatever IP address on that date and time. the complainant can file charges against your ISP for allowing copyright infringement from their system. so your ISP contacts you and tells you to cut it out or they will cancel your account. the complainant knows who did what from the outside by watching the files that are downloaded and seeing what IP’s are connected to them. the ISP doesnt give out your info as far as i know without a court order. but if you get more complaints then they will cancel your acct.